Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's time to go into that vault. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: be airing part two of the Vault episode that we
Speaker 1: started with last Saturday. Isn't that right? That's right? This
Speaker 1: one originally published August, the trans Humanist Rapture War Part two,
Speaker 1: which again was a discussion of various trans human utopian
Speaker 1: ideas um in light of various religious ideas about like
Speaker 1: a post Earth utopia. Now, I think the religious aspects
Speaker 1: of techno utopianism and techno dystopianism are are both actually
Speaker 1: fascinating and sort of uhh, endless the bottomless wells right
Speaker 1: that you can always come back to. I think we
Speaker 1: will revisit this topic again soon. Yeah, though though I
Speaker 1: don't know if we'll discuss my my concept of a
Speaker 1: rapture proof suit any further. This may be the only
Speaker 1: place that idea I gets still. No, that is a
Speaker 1: whole thing that I was gonna say, would do a
Speaker 1: whole episode on that, But in fact, what you should
Speaker 1: just do is keep that idea to yourself and get
Speaker 1: some venture capital behind it. Well, uh yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: can make that happen. But for now, let's suit up
Speaker 1: and head in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and Robert and I. Last time, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the rapture about Christian eschatology, religious eschatology in general,
Speaker 1: and secular eschatology of a technological nature such as the
Speaker 1: singularity trans humanism. And our discussion went so long that
Speaker 1: we decided to divide it up into two parts. So
Speaker 1: here is the second part of our conversation on the
Speaker 1: end times. Okay, well, I've got another uh futurist, sort
Speaker 1: of techno futurist mindset that I think we can ask.
Speaker 1: Is this a religion? Is it like a religion or
Speaker 1: does it just sort of like uh tickle some of
Speaker 1: the same weak spots. We've got as many religions too.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the singularity. Robert, do
Speaker 1: you feel good about the Singularity? You feel bad about it,
Speaker 1: you think it's a bunch of hooey? I feel good
Speaker 1: about it. Uh, I mean part of that I think
Speaker 1: comes from just being I'm a fan of like the
Speaker 1: A and M. Banks culture series model of of a
Speaker 1: post singularity, post scarcity world in which the super intelligent
Speaker 1: computers have our best interests at heart. They kind of
Speaker 1: look after us as kind of benevolent, semi noble gods. Yeah, okay, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so I think we need to explore this idea because this,
Speaker 1: to me is is the core of this kind of
Speaker 1: topic we're talking about today, like technological eschatology. So you
Speaker 1: could say the singularity, I think has come to have
Speaker 1: almost as many interpretations as the Christian escoton right, Like,
Speaker 1: just like the Christian eschatologies, they're all sort of loosely
Speaker 1: related and grounded in similar beliefs, but they vary in
Speaker 1: the explicit details or in the way you'd explain them,
Speaker 1: even if they're not necessarily contradictory. So, in the most
Speaker 1: basic sense, the singularity is a hypothesis that technological innovation,
Speaker 1: at some point in the future is going to reach
Speaker 1: a tipping point of unimaginable innovation that fundamentally changes the
Speaker 1: fate of humanity on a rapid time scale. Very often
Speaker 1: it involves artificial intelligence. So I'm gonna talk about three
Speaker 1: basic models just to give you an idea. One one
Speaker 1: is the super intelligence model, and this is the idea
Speaker 1: that humans are going to create superhuman artificial intelligence. So
Speaker 1: when you think about it, intelligence, I would probably agree
Speaker 1: has been the most rapid driver of change in the
Speaker 1: universe up until this point in cosmological or geological history.
Speaker 1: What difference does ten thousand years usually make to anything,
Speaker 1: you know, not a lot, hardly any, But you think
Speaker 1: about how much Earth has changed in the past ten
Speaker 1: thousand years due to intelligence. Once, once we reach the
Speaker 1: creation of machines with functional intelligence exceeding that of any human,
Speaker 1: assuming that actually does happen, proponents argue that this superhuman
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence is just going to rapidly transform our environment.
Speaker 1: The conditions of our lives, and the capabilities of human
Speaker 1: civilization will be fundamentally transformed on a very huge scale.
Speaker 1: And they say, so the age of super intelligence is dawning,
Speaker 1: and this is the singularity. Another way of looking at
Speaker 1: it is also based on artificial intelligence, but it's known
Speaker 1: as the intelligence explosion, and this is based on the
Speaker 1: idea of self improving intelligence paradigms that surpass our ability
Speaker 1: to understand or control them. So let's say, Robert, you
Speaker 1: build a superhuman artificial intelligence. What's the first thing you
Speaker 1: have it? Do? UM? Co author my paper about the
Speaker 1: creation superhero human AI intelligence. Oh yeah, well that's that's
Speaker 1: a smart move. But do some talk shows to promote
Speaker 1: it in my book about the creation? Yeah? I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: It's hard to think past that, right, come up with
Speaker 1: the tastiest breakfast cereal ever created? No? I mean what
Speaker 1: a lot of people say is, well, you know, the
Speaker 1: best bang for your buck as soon as you create
Speaker 1: a superhuman artificial intelligence is that it would be best
Speaker 1: put to use designing ways to rapidly make itself more intelligent,
Speaker 1: which theoretically it should be able to do. So if
Speaker 1: it can do this, it will experience exponential self improvement.
Speaker 1: And not only will our technological intelligence grow, and not
Speaker 1: only will it accelerate, but it's acceleration will accelerate. I
Speaker 1: feel like the people saying that that's the best use
Speaker 1: of super intelligence UM have not seen any science fiction film,
Speaker 1: because it seems like the thing to do is all right.
Speaker 1: It's it's reached the point to where it's smart enough
Speaker 1: that I can take it to Vegas and and just
Speaker 1: totally kill but it's not so smart that it will
Speaker 1: literally kill me, or or skying at the entire country. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I think the argument would
Speaker 1: go that, well, even if you don't do that, somebody's
Speaker 1: gonna somebody's gonna say, well, I want to have a
Speaker 1: smarter AI than your AI, so I'm gonna have my
Speaker 1: AI improve itself that I don't know. You take your
Speaker 1: AI to a poker game and somebody else has been
Speaker 1: having their AI self improve its own intelligence, and it's
Speaker 1: telling that person out this metaphors out of hand. But
Speaker 1: but you want to be the person with the smartest day.
Speaker 1: I right, Well, but it's kind of like you're you're
Speaker 1: reaching a point where you can create your own demons,
Speaker 1: create your own deities, and in doing so, it seems
Speaker 1: like you you need to know where to stop, like
Speaker 1: like maybe not make a full blown god, that make
Speaker 1: a demi god. Let me make an artificial demi god,
Speaker 1: because then it literally it has limits. Right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want a Hercules not a Zeus. Yeah, I'd far rather
Speaker 1: deal with a renegade or Hercules this in a situation
Speaker 1: as opposed to renegades, which of course is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much how both of those guys rolled what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Okay, one more idea of the singularity, and
Speaker 1: this is a I think a simpler version, but it
Speaker 1: just says that at some point technological process again, usually
Speaker 1: the emphasis is on artificial intelligence, but you could put
Speaker 1: the emphasis elsewhere. At some point it begins to accelerate
Speaker 1: so quickly that our power to predict the outcome becomes
Speaker 1: basically zero. Events will become so strange and unpredictable that
Speaker 1: we we just can't even imagine them from our present
Speaker 1: vantage point. So an outside context dident. Yeah, actually, sure,
Speaker 1: outside context problem caused by technological innovation. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: lot of modern singularity thinking can be traced, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty people who have written about this over the years,
Speaker 1: but I'd say the biggest figure in the singularity today
Speaker 1: is Ray Kerswile. He's the technologist and author. Ray Kers,
Speaker 1: while very smart guy, worked on technology for years. He's
Speaker 1: made a lot of very accurate and interesting predictions that
Speaker 1: have that have proved correct over the years. But he's
Speaker 1: also made a lot of predictions about the future that
Speaker 1: a lot of people now think are I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he's being overly optimistic, but anyway, curse Will has
Speaker 1: argued in several books that the Singularity, this artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: revolution that's going to fundamentally change humanity, is coming, and
Speaker 1: it's coming soon. In his two thousand five book The
Speaker 1: Singularity Is Near, curse Will predicted it would happen in so, Robert,
Speaker 1: you've got any plans for um? I think my son
Speaker 1: will be out of high school at that point. I
Speaker 1: think he's he's uh graduating high school theoretically in so Okay,
Speaker 1: So I guess. So, I don't know, Well, he have
Speaker 1: a job by the time the Singularity happened. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's crazy to think about that, Like what do
Speaker 1: you what do you? What do you do post high school?
Speaker 1: If the Singularity is coming in just a few years,
Speaker 1: Like do you go to college? Hey? With with the
Speaker 1: singularity in mind? Bingo, That is a very good question.
Speaker 1: So so let's back up. Let's just assume for a
Speaker 1: moment a singularity type scaton is coming. That might be
Speaker 1: a big assumption, but let's assume something like that will happen.
Speaker 1: Is it good or bad? Will we get the AI
Speaker 1: my Trea or the AI ragnarokh Well, obviously I want
Speaker 1: my Traya as opposed to Ragnarock. Yeah, I mean, so
Speaker 1: the my Trea version, what would it be? You know,
Speaker 1: war cease, all diseases, including aging itself or eradicated. There's
Speaker 1: general abundance of resources and wealth. Everybody gets what they want.
Speaker 1: Humans live indefinitely in a state of harmony, exploration, and bliss.
Speaker 1: If I feel like the model we get in most
Speaker 1: sci fi scenarios is that you think you're gonna get
Speaker 1: my Treia, but then you're actually on the road to Ragnarok,
Speaker 1: and then you end up just kind of burning everything
Speaker 1: down and going back to whatever the nest up system
Speaker 1: you had before. Right, So why do people think that
Speaker 1: we're on the road to Ragnarok? Well, you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, the machine, a machine smart enough to to
Speaker 1: do all this great stuff for you, is also smart
Speaker 1: enough to figure out how to kill you if it
Speaker 1: wants to. So why might it want to? Well, super
Speaker 1: intelligent machines, people say, well, either intentionally choose to eliminate
Speaker 1: humanity for some reason, though I admit I've never heard
Speaker 1: this explain in a way that made a lot of
Speaker 1: sense to me, Like why they would intentionally choose to
Speaker 1: hunt us down and eradicate us. So maybe somebody could
Speaker 1: explain that to me, Um, but the judge of the
Speaker 1: living and the dead, it could be. But but the
Speaker 1: other version is that perhaps merely by a flow of design,
Speaker 1: they tend to damage or destroy humanity as a byproduct
Speaker 1: of executing their primary function, and that that vision seems
Speaker 1: more plausible to me. But so, here's one common example
Speaker 1: of how something like this would. Oh, you've got a
Speaker 1: super intelligent computer program that's smarter than any human. It
Speaker 1: can improve its own intelligence, is just crazy smart, and
Speaker 1: it's designed to maximize efficiency along the production line of
Speaker 1: a factory that makes toilet paper. So somebody forgets to
Speaker 1: add some conditionals and the computer program ends up turning
Speaker 1: all the atoms on the surface of the earth, including
Speaker 1: the ones in your body, into toilet paper. It has
Speaker 1: done its job. Well, that sounds kind of crazy, But
Speaker 1: some tam or version of that nightmare seems more plausible
Speaker 1: to me than the intentional terminator style eradication of humans.
Speaker 1: I don't know what do you think about that, Robert Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I I think I tend to interpret the sort
Speaker 1: of sky net models the sort of like all humans
Speaker 1: are flawed. That's thus all humans must be eradicated thing
Speaker 1: to be more of a uh more rejecting insecurities. Well
Speaker 1: for that and also just a bedtime story to say,
Speaker 1: like make sure you program in that fail safe, right,
Speaker 1: you know, be And I feel like obviously we would
Speaker 1: have that fail safe, and that if it were a
Speaker 1: super intelligent machine, it would have Yeah. I just have
Speaker 1: a hard time buying into that model of a super
Speaker 1: advanced system that it would be so catastrophically myopic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, both visions have their advocates right there. There
Speaker 1: are smart people on both sides. But the funny thing
Speaker 1: is all this is assuming that something like the singularity
Speaker 1: will actually happen one way or another, and not everyone
Speaker 1: agrees that it will. But there are also people who
Speaker 1: have been critical of the idea of the singularity, and
Speaker 1: some people who have characterized it as a religious idea inherently.
Speaker 1: One of them is the technologist and virtual reality pioneer
Speaker 1: Jerone Landier, and he's got a lot of opinions about
Speaker 1: the Singularity. He's made this case in in books, said
Speaker 1: that it's not only religious in nature, but potentially a
Speaker 1: dangerous or harmful religion. So I read an article that
Speaker 1: he wrote and published in The New York Times in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten called the First Church of Robotics, and
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. So Lanier points out that
Speaker 1: every news report of an advance in artificial intelligence gives
Speaker 1: us the impression that the field is making steady progress
Speaker 1: to overtake human intelligence and capabilities. And I sort of
Speaker 1: agree with him. I get that feeling when you see
Speaker 1: these little news stories like there's there's a new artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence program that can smell flatulence. There's a new artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence program that can tell a joke. You know, all
Speaker 1: these like weird little quirks of humanity, and they seem
Speaker 1: to add up to something over time. Okay, so it
Speaker 1: can smell farts, that can make jokes about farts because
Speaker 1: it's it's about the corner, like the stand up. It
Speaker 1: has become Adam Sandler. Yeah, it has surpassed its humanity.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there's nothing wrong with individual AI projects,
Speaker 1: Lannier says, In fact, he has worked on them himself.
Speaker 1: But he makes a couple of point points. He says,
Speaker 1: individual advances in artificial intelligence research can be interpreted more
Speaker 1: usefully without the overall framework of AI meaning without the
Speaker 1: idea that computers are becoming synthetic versions of human intelligence.
Speaker 1: And the example he gives is, you know, the IBM
Speaker 1: computer winning on Jeopardy, Watson going on, they're beating people
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy. So he he says, that's a theatrical stunt
Speaker 1: that over sells a fake aspect of what this computer
Speaker 1: program can do, you know, conversational human knowledge, which it
Speaker 1: doesn't really have, and under sells a real aspect of
Speaker 1: its capabilities that it's a very powerful phrase based search engine.
Speaker 1: And then he also says that AI, uh, that the
Speaker 1: AI that in some way passes for human requires humans
Speaker 1: to do all the work, Like when you've got a
Speaker 1: social robot, you know, going around saying like Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: your friendly social robot. Look at how advanced my artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is. His point is that humans be being social,
Speaker 1: will work with what they get. And if you're having
Speaker 1: a transaction with a robot that you are told is
Speaker 1: social in nature, you can very easily adapt your social
Speaker 1: behaviors to the extreme limitations of this machine, and they
Speaker 1: do tend to be pretty extreme. You're not going to
Speaker 1: mistake at a machine for a human. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed on the show before. I mean humans
Speaker 1: can have we can have conversations with with a with
Speaker 1: a doll, with a with a smiley face. It's scrawled
Speaker 1: on the wall and in putting. So, uh, it's not
Speaker 1: that much of a step to say that, yes, we
Speaker 1: can have a conversation with a chat bot. We can,
Speaker 1: we can have a conversation with a search engine, and
Speaker 1: of course we can certainly have a conversation with an
Speaker 1: echo borg. How often, though, do you meet a person
Speaker 1: who really loves fruit trees? That's true, I love fruit trees.
Speaker 1: I hate fruit trees. But how can you hate fruit
Speaker 1: trees because I'm not a robot? What would you do
Speaker 1: if you found a turtle the turtles on its back?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you turning him over? Joe? But what what?
Speaker 1: What I'll tell you about my mother? Okay? Sorry? So
Speaker 1: but anyway, A lawyer goes on to say, quote, what
Speaker 1: bothers me about this trend? And he's talking about this
Speaker 1: AI media trend. However, is that by allowing artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: to reshape our concept of personhood, we're leaving ourselves opened
Speaker 1: to the flip side. We think of people more and
Speaker 1: more as computers, just as we think of computers as people,
Speaker 1: and I think there might be something to that, actually,
Speaker 1: that the idea of AI not only sort of lifts
Speaker 1: computers up, but in a certain way, at least emotionally,
Speaker 1: kind of lowers humans down. Yeah. And we we've discussed this,
Speaker 1: I feel recently on the show too, about how just
Speaker 1: even though we we have this increasingly pervasive model of
Speaker 1: our own cognitive performance as being essentially a program, we
Speaker 1: think about processing things, we think about visual input of data,
Speaker 1: we think about crunching the numbers. Uh, and in various
Speaker 1: other models we use technology g to inform our understanding
Speaker 1: of how our brains are working. And those are just
Speaker 1: those are just metaphors really, and but the underlying processes
Speaker 1: are not really comparable to the computers that we have today.
Speaker 1: It would be we could maybe compare them to an
Speaker 1: advanced computer will haveing in the future, some sort of
Speaker 1: maybe um you know, um advanced machine maybe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Uh, They're they're very much metaphors.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that they're not useful metaphors. But
Speaker 1: I do think I want to take what Landing are
Speaker 1: saying seriously here, because I think he has a point Anyway,
Speaker 1: he goes on when he's going to get to the singularity,
Speaker 1: so he says, you know, engineers are humans with human desires,
Speaker 1: even though they may be advocating this sort of like
Speaker 1: dehumanized technological ideology or view of intelligence in personhood in
Speaker 1: the world, and they've got the same desires that lead
Speaker 1: us to create and follow religions. So this sort of
Speaker 1: leads them to wrap their technological ideologies up into parallels
Speaker 1: of religious thinking. And he and according to Lannier, he
Speaker 1: thinks the concept of the singularity is a religion expressed
Speaker 1: through engineering culture. And he points out if this religion entails,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially scatological beliefs that imply that most people, basically,
Speaker 1: I would say, anybody not working in information theory, artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: or robotics, if pretty much anybody outside those fields can
Speaker 1: basically just sit and wait for imminent salvation or destruction
Speaker 1: via the machines. And if inadvertent devaluation of persons by
Speaker 1: overstating analogies between persons and computers takes place, it can
Speaker 1: certainly exacerbate tensions between traditional religions and modernity, and it
Speaker 1: can be a destructive and demoralizing force in itself. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he ends by saying technology best serves humanity when we
Speaker 1: resist the urge to turn it into a religious ideology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you ended up in a situation where you're like,
Speaker 1: I could, I could exercise and eat right, But singularities
Speaker 1: come in. Singularities gonna work that out, or you might think,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna bother to write the Great American novel,
Speaker 1: because Great American Novel bought thirty seven oh five. It's
Speaker 1: gonna write the Great American novel. It's gonna write one
Speaker 1: a day, one every hour. Yeah. I I could work
Speaker 1: hard to achieve peace in world civilization, but maybe the
Speaker 1: Ai'll sort it all out for this or just kill
Speaker 1: us all. I mean, either one. It's sort of a demoralizing,
Speaker 1: de motivating belief, which of course has obvious parallels with
Speaker 1: you know, more apocalyptic near future um religious movements that
Speaker 1: said the end time is coming. So what does it
Speaker 1: matter giving your money now? Certainly? Yeah, what whether it's
Speaker 1: a secular or you know, supernatural or not supernatural in nature?
Speaker 1: If you've got beliefs about a powerful force that comes
Speaker 1: in and intervenes and makes all of our actions obsolete
Speaker 1: either either way it comes from. Uh that seems like
Speaker 1: it can have a de motivating force on the way
Speaker 1: you live your life. But I want to say one
Speaker 1: more thing Linear says about the Singularity that I think
Speaker 1: is interesting. Uh So, I listened to a podcast that
Speaker 1: was an interview with Linear and and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: the difference between a religious fanatic and a religious non
Speaker 1: fanatic is in the certainty of the imminent timing of
Speaker 1: whatever their scatan is, you know, whatever their end of
Speaker 1: days is. It's when you believe that you know when
Speaker 1: it's happening and it's soon that you really turn into
Speaker 1: a nutcase and you do harm to yourself and others.
Speaker 1: In my mind, the Singularity movement is sort of doing that.
Speaker 1: And I think I see what he's saying there, because
Speaker 1: he sort of qualifies saying that if you mean, in
Speaker 1: the very long term view, humanity will make some phase
Speaker 1: transition and it has something to do with information technology
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily crazy or harmful. You know, you might say,
Speaker 1: who knows, over the next few thousands of years, some
Speaker 1: somehow humanity might change itself due to computers and the
Speaker 1: Internet and stuff like that. But the notion that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen in twenty years or something is destructive
Speaker 1: and a sign of fanaticism, according to him, And I
Speaker 1: think that that idea makes sense to me too. Well,
Speaker 1: in large part, you could say, you're you're setting yourself
Speaker 1: up for disappointment, You're setting yourself up to fail right,
Speaker 1: that you're going to reach that point when the second
Speaker 1: Coming is going to happen, when the Singularity is going
Speaker 1: to happen, and it doesn't happen, and then how do
Speaker 1: you feel about the world. Then how do you approach
Speaker 1: the near and long term future? Well, I think that
Speaker 1: is definitely something we should talk about in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But I want to finish up on the Singularity with
Speaker 1: one or two more things. First of all, I want
Speaker 1: to go back and defend against that by saying, there
Speaker 1: are also people who say, you know, look, if we're
Speaker 1: worried about the Ai Ragnarok uh saying that AI is
Speaker 1: going to come in and destroy us, all we do
Speaker 1: need to be thinking about it now. Even if it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen soon. Just the possibility that it
Speaker 1: might happen soon means that we need to be preparing immediately.
Speaker 1: I can see the wisdom in that too. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's Uh. At the risk of sounding
Speaker 1: fascil I, I see both sides. Yeah, well, I mean, certainly, uh,
Speaker 1: if the iceberg is out there, we want to know
Speaker 1: how not to run the ship into it. But then again,
Speaker 1: but what if the iceberg is a superhuman robot that
Speaker 1: you don't even know whether it could possibly exist or not. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thinking that it enables humanity time
Speaker 1: and time again to not actually, you know, deal with
Speaker 1: the problems that are facing them, to just say, ah,
Speaker 1: it might not even be real. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: The jury is still out on the science there. So
Speaker 1: I want to offer one more thing, the impossible defense
Speaker 1: of singularity thinking. I found a short video on YouTube
Speaker 1: where somebody in a crowd asks Ray Kurzweil himself, the
Speaker 1: guy who said it's going to happen if the Singularity
Speaker 1: is a religion, and Kerswill responds that. He says, essentially,
Speaker 1: it does provide some of the same things that religion
Speaker 1: traditionally provided, like a means to forestall death. That's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out. But it's also not a religion inherently because
Speaker 1: it's based on scientific and technological prediction, and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: it doesn't start from rapture. He also says, quote, religion
Speaker 1: emerged in pre scientific times. To call it a religion
Speaker 1: is to say that it's pre scientific or unscientific. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, maybe you're maybe not Like I
Speaker 1: definitely do sense that some people who call the Singularity
Speaker 1: a religion, because Landing is not the only one who
Speaker 1: said this, this is a thing people say in criticism
Speaker 1: of it. I think some people are merely being pejorative.
Speaker 1: You've noticed that if you ever heard anybody call something
Speaker 1: that's not a religion a religion, it's an insult. And
Speaker 1: that interesting, like, uh that political? Can it that you
Speaker 1: agree with Greg Stillson Man? You all you Greg Stilson
Speaker 1: supporters are like a religion that's never a positive thing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I find myself doing that less and less
Speaker 1: because I feel like I can have It's just me personally,
Speaker 1: But I think there are plenty of things that I
Speaker 1: can say, Oh, I have kind of a religious interest
Speaker 1: in this, not to say that I am you know
Speaker 1: that it's some sort of like fanatical, like unrealistic level
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm for it, but like I I kind of
Speaker 1: measure it's like to the amount of my person, the
Speaker 1: amount of my identity, uh, that I pour into the topics.
Speaker 1: So I would say that I have religious or semi
Speaker 1: religious enthusiasm for things like science, for certain uh, for
Speaker 1: certain fictional worlds and ideas. Um. Well, Robert, if I
Speaker 1: may compliment you, I think that's a sign of broad
Speaker 1: minded thinking. I mean, no, I think both religious and
Speaker 1: non religious people. I don't think this is really limited
Speaker 1: to people who think religion is in some way a
Speaker 1: bad thing. But I think generally both religious and non
Speaker 1: religious people insult a thing that's not explicitly a religion
Speaker 1: by calling it a religion. Yeah, I would agree with that, yes,
Speaker 1: but yeah, in your sense, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways we could just observe, like, okay,
Speaker 1: not assuming that calling something a religion is a bad thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: In what ways is the Singularity like a religion? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it does have a lot of similarities. It
Speaker 1: does seem to offer a means to forestall death. It
Speaker 1: does seem to offer uh, potentially both apocalyptic and utopian
Speaker 1: eschatological visions. It does seem to rely I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would say it relies on faith in the
Speaker 1: same way that many supernatural beliefs do. But it does
Speaker 1: seem to sort of ask you to to imagine the
Speaker 1: possibility that things that we've never seen before are going
Speaker 1: to happen. You know, we've never seen superhuman artificial intelligence before.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that that can in principle exist. We
Speaker 1: but we also just don't know that it couldn't. So
Speaker 1: it's just like maybe maybe not all right, So this
Speaker 1: seems like a good place to bring it back around
Speaker 1: to trans humanism and rapture the the idea that there
Speaker 1: are all these similarities between the two things, there are
Speaker 1: certain conflicts between these two ideas, and then at the
Speaker 1: very end here we may have just a little fun
Speaker 1: thinking about how the two crash into each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell me, because here's one thing I've noticed, I think,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen any data to back this episode.
Speaker 1: This is just purely anecdotal experience. In my experience, people
Speaker 1: who identify with trans humanism or belief in the singularity
Speaker 1: are overwhelmingly atheist or agnostic, non traditionally religious people. Yes,
Speaker 1: you do see a great deal of that. However, it
Speaker 1: is worth pointing out that again they have at least
Speaker 1: two organizations. You have the Mormon Transhumanist Association, that's the
Speaker 1: world's largest advocacy network work really yeah, for the ethical
Speaker 1: use of technology and religion to expand human abilities. That's
Speaker 1: they're they're from their their talking points. Then you also
Speaker 1: have the Christian trans Humanist Association, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: each one has their own sort of set of guidelines
Speaker 1: and all. Um. Uh, and I could, I could certainly
Speaker 1: roll through a lot of this, but for instance, um,
Speaker 1: that the Mormon trans Humanist Association has this idea that
Speaker 1: they push of a transfigurism. They said transfigure they say,
Speaker 1: transfigurism is religious trans humanism exemplified by syncretization of Mormonism
Speaker 1: and trans humanism. Yeah. Um. And then meanwhile, the Christian
Speaker 1: trans Humanist Association, one of their tenants is that God's
Speaker 1: mission involves the transformation and renewal of creation, including humanity,
Speaker 1: and that we are called by Christ to participate in
Speaker 1: that mission working against illness, hunger, oppression, in justice, and death. Uh. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could look at it that way. For
Speaker 1: some reason, the idea of transforming the human animal, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I I don't see in
Speaker 1: any way that it violates any tenants I recognize of Christianity,
Speaker 1: but it seems just sort of like, esthetically in affront
Speaker 1: to traditional religious thinking. It's a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: talked about in our you know, UH Techno Religion episodes
Speaker 1: that we did earlier, and you could say that this
Speaker 1: episode is in many ways a sequel to those, or
Speaker 1: it's in that spirit. But in the Techno Religion episodes,
Speaker 1: we talked about how religious thinking seems most encouraged by
Speaker 1: a traditional technological atmosphere, and when you bring computers and
Speaker 1: iPhones and stuff, it just does seem profane in some way.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing in the Bible or in any religious
Speaker 1: text I know of that says thou shalt not bring
Speaker 1: a computer into a worship service. But you know, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel very sacred. It doesn't feel right. Now.
Speaker 1: Going back to the the idea of sort of Christian
Speaker 1: transhumanist ideas that James J. Hughes paper that I'm antioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Um he calls uh up a quote from a fourteen
Speaker 1: eighties six UH work by Pico Della Mirandola, who was
Speaker 1: a Christian humanist and in his orritation on the dignity
Speaker 1: of Man wrote quote, to you has granted the power
Speaker 1: of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts,
Speaker 1: or to you as granted the power contained in your
Speaker 1: intellect and judgment to be reborn into the higher forms
Speaker 1: the divine um. And and and he wrote other other
Speaker 1: statements as well that kind of backed up this kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, way pre humanist notion of how one might
Speaker 1: improve the expression of human life. Well. Yeah, I mean, if,
Speaker 1: for example, Jesus said take all you have and give
Speaker 1: to the poor, then wouldn't the Christian who thinks that
Speaker 1: we can achieve abundance through technology be best served by
Speaker 1: working on technology that will eliminate all scarcity and bring
Speaker 1: great resources to everyone. Yeah, it seems like you would
Speaker 1: be in favor of any trans humanist idea that does
Speaker 1: not attempt to interfere with God's plan for humanity. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on what you think that plan is.
Speaker 1: Right now, this is where we get into an interesting idea,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of where uh okay, So, first
Speaker 1: of all, you see a lot of especially the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorist of the the Christian conspiracy theorist area of the Internet.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of mashing up of trans humanist
Speaker 1: ideas with with the bad guys in in a book
Speaker 1: of Revelations. Yeah, remember how I mentioned the ones who
Speaker 1: get to rule with Christ and the millennium are those
Speaker 1: who have not taken the mark of the beast and
Speaker 1: many and what is the mark of the beast that
Speaker 1: I've seen various interpretations where they say, oh, the mark
Speaker 1: of the beast is trans humanism, Like to become trans
Speaker 1: human is to take the mark of the beast, and
Speaker 1: therefore only sort of uh, you know, non augmented humans
Speaker 1: are going to be part of this model. There have
Speaker 1: been many visions of the mark of the Beast in
Speaker 1: Christian literature that thought that it was going to be
Speaker 1: some sort of biometric verification. So imagine that you replace
Speaker 1: your credit card with a barcode or a chip in
Speaker 1: your arm or your head or your hand or something
Speaker 1: like that that you can use to pay for groceries
Speaker 1: or something like that, just by scanning your body. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have said, well, something like this is
Speaker 1: coming and that's got to be it. That's the mark
Speaker 1: of the beast. And then the Antichrist is perhaps the
Speaker 1: AI write this post singularity artificial intelligence that that we're
Speaker 1: investing all of our our faith and energy into. And
Speaker 1: I put it, this is an interesting idea too. I
Speaker 1: have seen arguments to say that the Illuminati or the
Speaker 1: Anti Christ or the Illuminati and the inn of Christ,
Speaker 1: however you want to factor those two bad guy factions together,
Speaker 1: they are going to create a fake rapture in order
Speaker 1: to trick the faithful into thinking that the rapture has
Speaker 1: already occurred and they were left out, thus like dismantling
Speaker 1: their faith a bit. That is an awesome conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: It is um and that's like the mother of them all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found some some stuff online about it, dating back
Speaker 1: from around two thousand UM and they were weirdly propping
Speaker 1: up some of this by pointing to a Technology Review
Speaker 1: article about the about editing live video, editing people out
Speaker 1: of live video. Uh. The idea being here that through
Speaker 1: mass media consumption, you could fake the rapture of individuals
Speaker 1: and and if I may, I'm thinking if the Illuminatis
Speaker 1: involved in this, you could then disappear like famous a
Speaker 1: moral individuals and say, hey check out this, this particular
Speaker 1: awful celebrity just got raptured. You didn't clearly you should
Speaker 1: abandon all of your faith. That is that, as mighty
Speaker 1: sinister Robert, Or is it though? Because Okay, so if
Speaker 1: and I'm playing with the ideas here and having some
Speaker 1: fun with the ideas. But if the Antichrist is an
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, could it be a benevolent artificial intelligence that
Speaker 1: has realized, Hey, if the right off, if the end
Speaker 1: times come, that's bad for all these humans that I'm protecting.
Speaker 1: What can I, as an all powerful AI do in
Speaker 1: human society to prevent the end times from coming? Does
Speaker 1: that mean faking the rapture and perhaps forestalling the rapture? Well,
Speaker 1: I know many Christians believe that the Antichrist will come
Speaker 1: in the name of peace, and that is weird. You
Speaker 1: would end up in a scenario where you would say, no,
Speaker 1: peace is bad because we actually need all that tribulation
Speaker 1: to come so that the good guys can ultimately win,
Speaker 1: even though it's going to mean a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of suffering. Okay, we've gotten very, very deep into
Speaker 1: the both secular and religious theology of the end here,
Speaker 1: so maybe we should pull back. Are you ready to
Speaker 1: pull back? Full back? Let's pull back to the real
Speaker 1: world and and look at a few examples of what
Speaker 1: happens when our our scatons, when our spiritual in times,
Speaker 1: utopias or apocalypse is don't come about as predicted. So
Speaker 1: there have been so many religious predictions of the end
Speaker 1: times that have failed. There is no way we can
Speaker 1: even begin to list them. I would recommend you go
Speaker 1: to Wikipedia. Here's a great Wikipedia page, uh called list
Speaker 1: of dates predicted for apocalyptic events. There are just hundreds,
Speaker 1: uh and it's it's really interesting. One of my favorites
Speaker 1: is the leader of the or one of the leaders
Speaker 1: of the monster rebellion, the Anabaptist rebellion in Prussia, Jan Matthias.
Speaker 1: He had a good end times prediction that didn't turn
Speaker 1: out good for him, and I think he ended up mutilated.
Speaker 1: And yeah, anyway, things things don't tend to well, actually
Speaker 1: not tend to Why am I hedging? No one who
Speaker 1: has ever predicted the end of the world has turned
Speaker 1: out to be correct that that is a true statement.
Speaker 1: Inevitably these predictions fail. And then what happens when they fail,
Speaker 1: Because if you're the kind of individual who's thrown out
Speaker 1: these these predictions, you tend to have there tend to
Speaker 1: be people listening to you reading your word, gathering around you,
Speaker 1: maybe giving you all of their money and living in
Speaker 1: a barn with you, or in a bunker, or planning
Speaker 1: for spaceships to come and steal you away so you
Speaker 1: can avoid massive floods. Um. And then how do you
Speaker 1: readjust well, there's a There was a famous book came
Speaker 1: out from psychologist Leon Festinger titled Win Prophecy Fails. And
Speaker 1: this is this was an important work. He and his
Speaker 1: colleagues studied the Seekers, a religious group that believed a
Speaker 1: massive flood would wipe out the West coast uh and
Speaker 1: and the founders said that beings from the planet Clarion
Speaker 1: were communicating to her through automatic writing. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the followers were banning their jobs or possessions, their spouses
Speaker 1: to wait on the flying saucers that would rescue them. Wow.
Speaker 1: And then nothing happened. So so they all they all
Speaker 1: figured they were wrong and went home right. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And and this is something we can sort of see.
Speaker 1: I guess we can look for models of this in
Speaker 1: our own lives on lesser with with lesser um lesser steaks.
Speaker 1: One example that instantly comes to mind, and we see
Speaker 1: a lot of this in sort of geek culture, and
Speaker 1: that is what happens from that movie that you're super
Speaker 1: excited about it doesn't get that great of reviews. How
Speaker 1: do you respond. Do you say, uh, well maybe it's
Speaker 1: not going to be that good, or you see it
Speaker 1: and you think, okay, well I agree with the critics
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that good. Or do you do do
Speaker 1: you double down? Oh? Many will double down, yes, depending
Speaker 1: on I think a lot of times it's based on
Speaker 1: how much you've invested in the movie going into it.
Speaker 1: So if there's a movie you hoped would be good,
Speaker 1: but you thought about it a couple of times before
Speaker 1: it came out, and then you see the reviews aren't good,
Speaker 1: Oh that's disappointing. If it's a movie you've been talking
Speaker 1: about with your friends every single day up until it
Speaker 1: comes out, and then the reviews aren't good, you're like,
Speaker 1: well they gotta be wrong. Now it's sunk cost. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: with films, you can simply argue, well, hey, I enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: so I don't care. Uh, certainly, I'm I'm the type
Speaker 1: of person who enjoys many bad movies, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna apologize about, say, liking Chronicles a riddic.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a bad movie. I'm not gonna argue
Speaker 1: it's good, but but it certainly was enjoyable. Robert, I
Speaker 1: have a question for you. You seem like maybe the
Speaker 1: right guy for this. Were you one of the few
Speaker 1: people who liked on Lee's Hulk. Yeah, well, I enjoyed
Speaker 1: it at the time. I didn't like love it, but
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the Hulk. He's holking it up there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the follow up more, but I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think people were in love with that one.
Speaker 1: Like that one, even though it was an early Marvel
Speaker 1: Cinematic Universe movement, the one with Edward Norton. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I enjoyed that seemed kind of forgettable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one the the the those who are a member
Speaker 1: of the religion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they do
Speaker 1: not bring that particular book of the Marvel Cinematic Bible
Speaker 1: up that much. It is the it is the problematic
Speaker 1: chapter in the scripture. It's like Second Chronicles. People just
Speaker 1: don't quote from it a whole lot. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little off off subject here. Essentially, Festing
Speaker 1: festing or entered into this with the mindset that people
Speaker 1: would need to resolve cognitive dissonance. They can't just argue, hey,
Speaker 1: I know that this, I know that my beliefs are crappy,
Speaker 1: but I enjoy them. No, your beliefs were based along
Speaker 1: the lines that a flood would come and you'd be
Speaker 1: on a UFO right now, and you are not. So
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that? He said that they
Speaker 1: doubled down on their beliefs and recruitment efforts, but in
Speaker 1: reality some leave, but the vast majority um experience little
Speaker 1: cognitive dissidents, and so they make only minor adjustments to
Speaker 1: their beliefs. So it ends up having like really, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that great an effect. Like the failures come
Speaker 1: and you can always this is the key part. You
Speaker 1: can always attribute that failed prophecy to human slip ups. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so let's say you predict that the Singularity
Speaker 1: is going to come in a certain year and you
Speaker 1: get there and nothing happens. Well, I mean you could
Speaker 1: always say, well, hold on, now, this doesn't challenge in
Speaker 1: any way the principle that the Singularity is coming and
Speaker 1: it's coming soon. It's just I can explain this. We
Speaker 1: had a we had a big recession in the economy
Speaker 1: several years back, and that cut way down on funding
Speaker 1: for universities and corporations that are studying machine learning and
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, and so progress just got slowed by some
Speaker 1: external events that aren't, you know, my predictions basically sound.
Speaker 1: We just had a few slip ups that happened. We
Speaker 1: didn't realize Pokemon Go would be such as success and
Speaker 1: distract everybody and and decrease productivity. Right, so, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You can make those arguments about about singularity.
Speaker 1: You can make those those arguments about any kind of
Speaker 1: social utopian idea. You can make excuses for anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the typical problem with utopian cults is
Speaker 1: it's almost always the same the the utopian leader says
Speaker 1: this is the way we're gonna make life better for
Speaker 1: for you and all the followers, and then there's some
Speaker 1: sort of sex scandal, there's some sort of power disruption,
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, and you can always say, well, no,
Speaker 1: they just were the wrong vessel for the message. Well,
Speaker 1: this also works for non technological but secular utopias. Imagine
Speaker 1: the way people think about the implementation of communist utopia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so you create a Marxist government. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about you know, socialist democracy or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's so, you know, the real utopian vision, like
Speaker 1: we're gonna create a perfect workers paradise um and and
Speaker 1: it kind of fails or I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 1: always arguable, but I think it's pretty hard to say,
Speaker 1: look at the Soviet Union or something and say that
Speaker 1: worked great. But you can always argue, well, they did,
Speaker 1: they just didn't do it right. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: a problem with the principle. They're just they weren't real
Speaker 1: communists or something. Yeah, they were the they were the
Speaker 1: the fake Christ as opposed to the actual cast. They
Speaker 1: were antichristis Yeah, there's nothing wrong with my the principle
Speaker 1: behind my my end times prediction. I just I made
Speaker 1: I made errors. The math is wrong, I I translated
Speaker 1: the Golden Tablets incorrectly, etcetera. So that seems to be
Speaker 1: the basic time timeline, the basic outcome for any kind
Speaker 1: of failed prophecy, be it you know, the value of
Speaker 1: a particular superhero movie or the outcome of a of
Speaker 1: an apocalyptic prophecy. Robert I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: one weird specific example. So we've mentioned the idea of
Speaker 1: singularity that of course hasn't been disproven yet, but you know,
Speaker 1: we we can imagine and how it could be adjusted
Speaker 1: if it were disproven. We've talked about Marxist supposed to utopias,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if you could look at the Internet
Speaker 1: as a failed secular utopia, because if you go back
Speaker 1: to the early day, you know, dot com bubble type
Speaker 1: days where people are talking about what's possible with the Internet,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of hyperbolic positive language where people
Speaker 1: are talking in incredibly grandiose terms about the Internet almost
Speaker 1: as a type of Utopia's going to open all these
Speaker 1: doors and connect people all over the world for limitless
Speaker 1: sharing of ideas and potential, the information super highway. We're
Speaker 1: you know, we're all going to be talking and sharing
Speaker 1: ideas and it's it's just gonna be great. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, look at the your Facebook feed today. Could
Speaker 1: you argue that the Internet is a failed secular utopia
Speaker 1: if you if you look at its goals as purely utopian,
Speaker 1: I think I think very much, though, like I don't
Speaker 1: think the Inner Net. Certainly, the Internet has has connected
Speaker 1: us more. It's allowed for a great deal of sharing
Speaker 1: and UH and informational availability. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it also allows you to simply, you know, flock to
Speaker 1: people who share your own set of beliefs, making it
Speaker 1: easier to find UH like minded individuals. Both for both
Speaker 1: in the positive and in the negative sense, You've been
Speaker 1: able allows us to UH to put on a mask
Speaker 1: UH and lose their identity and and lash out with
Speaker 1: the most horrible you know, UH in the most horrible
Speaker 1: ways and complete strangers. I mean, I don't have to
Speaker 1: tell anybody this. You're all on the internet. You know that.
Speaker 1: You know how it all plays out. It's more of
Speaker 1: just an expression and in various ways apple amplification of
Speaker 1: who we are as opposed to a refinement of who
Speaker 1: we are. And that always the way you can look
Speaker 1: at that as all utopias. Somehow, all utopias end up
Speaker 1: being very human. Yeah, Like, we're still going to express
Speaker 1: as human no matter what sort of social structure you
Speaker 1: try and strain us through, no matter what kind of
Speaker 1: technological change you strain us through, We're going to come
Speaker 1: out as the same animal. And I think that's inherently
Speaker 1: why there is the appeal of these superhuman forces, like
Speaker 1: either a supernatural religious force God or or you know,
Speaker 1: the gods of any religion coming into set things right
Speaker 1: via some kind of power that transcends what we're capable
Speaker 1: of naturally, or a superhuman artificial intelligence, powerful machines that
Speaker 1: are smarter than we are and no better than us
Speaker 1: and can improve us in ways that we don't seem
Speaker 1: to be capable of via our natural experimentation with social behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so enter the AI, inter Christ, enter the Bodhisatva of
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, whatever it takes for something from the
Speaker 1: outside to step in and shake us into the right form.
Speaker 1: All right. So there you have it, the rapture, the singularity, uh,
Speaker 1: trans humanism. We threw out a lot of ideas year
Speaker 1: and moved them around on the board, had some fun
Speaker 1: with them, hopefully, had some some thoughtful conversation about it.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure a lot of you have some feedback
Speaker 1: as well, your own thoughts on these topics. And I
Speaker 1: and I do want to ask everyone out there if
Speaker 1: there was some sort of a Christian rapture, what if
Speaker 1: there was a way to create a rapture proof suit?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, superhuman technology versus superhuman uh supernatural power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the the ai Antichrist that I was going
Speaker 1: on about earlier. Perhaps they might come up with some
Speaker 1: sort of shielding to try and prevent you know, souls
Speaker 1: from being sucked up into the into the into the
Speaker 1: outer void. And then on the other hand, perhaps someone
Speaker 1: might want to you know, even a faithful individual might say,
Speaker 1: actually I need to stay behind. I want to document it.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I I love the some people in my
Speaker 1: life too much who are not believers, or I just
Speaker 1: want to, you know, make sure I get to work
Speaker 1: on time. The next day. I better wear a rapture
Speaker 1: proof suit that will contain my myself and keep nice.
Speaker 1: You know almost why wearing uh like weighted boots to
Speaker 1: keep from just rising above the ground. Robert, you never
Speaker 1: cease to amaze me. Oh well, thank you, Joe. If
Speaker 1: you try, uh so anyway, wrap your proof suits. What
Speaker 1: do you think about that? You can find us at
Speaker 1: the stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You can
Speaker 1: reach out to us on Facebook and Twitter a few
Speaker 1: other social media accounts as well. You'll find links to
Speaker 1: those at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and
Speaker 1: if you want to email us. As always, you can
Speaker 1: write to us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com. Four